FL18 Pre Season Community Power Rankings by Crusader

Since bidding has ended there has been endless debate on the discord about who’s winning, how good certain teams are, and which team is the most trash. So I made these community rankings to gather several different opinions and see what the consensus is. We had 17 responses in total, 6 of them from captains. Let’s jump in and see the results.

Format:
Team Name (Captain) [Average Rating]

10. Corrupt (Rage) [8.29]Sader: In last place, to the surprise of few, is Rage More Nerd’s collection of players. I did not call them a team because that’s a designation they’re going to have to work for. Rage went for Boss as his first pick, which was a reasonable choice for a ball runner. But reason died there when he picked up copilot and J bomb to round out the squad. Copilot is a runner who doesn’t play customs and I don’t know what he can bring to the table here. J Bomb could be a quality fourth on some teams but this doesn’t feel like a good fit for him. I don’t know who is going to have the ball, rumor has it Boss will be tanking and they’ll be handing it off to Copilot or J Bomb. You hate to see that though since Boss and Rage are easily the best runners on the team.

Now we’ve got a tie….

Silva: Focus on just bidding up other players, and this is what you get sometimes. This team will have a hard time winning games. In order for Corrupt to find any kind of success, I feel like they’ll need both Rage and Boss tanking, as well as bring in Trespass as the third tank. Who runs the ball? Whoever is better at doing so between Copilot and J Bomb. I feel like the aforementioned trio needs to be tanking in order for this team to find any success. Even then, it will be difficult.

T8. Team 8 (Mungo) [7.88]Sader: Mungo’s team is an odd one. This is the sort of team I expected Ace to end up on, but instead it’s St0p that has landed here and how hard he can carry will show us how far this team can go. I have faith in Mungo fulfilling his running duties but I think captaining this team will be tough. FBK and xKnight have very…. distinctive, I guess, personalities. Both of them could thrive under firm coaching from a top player. I’m not sure how they’ll do here. Therein lies the difference between Stop and Ace. I actually like the way Stop plays better, but Ace could teach this team so much. Stop with no mic can’t. So I think that’s where this team will fall short.

Silva: This is kind of a weird team to me. Mungo grabbed Stop, which is a great play since he was probably #2 in the pool for me next to Ace. After that however, the team gets a little questionable. FBK and Knight are pretty decent players in their own right, but not exactly powerhouses. Maybe these players are all used to play matchmaking together or something, I’m not sure. It’s hard to bet against Mungo particularly after last season, I just don’t know what to expect from this team at the moment.

T8. Nobility (PD) [7.88]Sader: Honestly I feel like this team was troll bids but they have a couple believers, enough to get them to a tied 8th position on our rankings. To be fair I haven’t seen perfect demise or revenge enough to say much about them so I probably shouldn’t judge and this will be a short writeup. But honestly what I see is weak tanking and some people that are about to learn how hard passing is against good defense. I like Hawk and wanted him on my team but I’m not sure he’s ready to be the #1 for a team and that’s where he has ended up.

Silva: It seems PD, like Avenger, was going for more of a “balanced” team with the large amount of credits he had. However, I don’t think he did nearly as well. Hawk is a great pick, he’s a strong Hybrid that can pretty much do whatever you need, but if we’re comparing directly to Avenger’s team, I wouldn’t say he’s better than KD or BCN. Then we have Skiyttles who has his moments of brilliance for sure, but I wouldn’t consider him a powerhouse either. I don’t have any experience with Revenge, but going pretty negative in Ammy last season doesn’t bode too well since now he’ll have to go against Pros. However, PD does have the advantage of essentially picking up the team he won the ammy championship with last season, which I assume was what he was going for. Whether it was the right call remains to be seen. Presumably he’s betting on their already established teamwork to carry them this season as well, as it may could. However, I personally don’t see them doing as well considering the added competition.

7. Legacy (Reyas) [7.76]Sader: I had a tough time ranking this team personally. And I wasn’t alone, because the rankings for this team spanned from 3-10. The kind of disparity is expected when you look at the team. Reyas is the most consistent player here, He’s had a lot of success with aggressive running in legacy and I don’t expect a change of style from him this season. The rest of the team is what has people guessing. Nets the Golden Ticket is still good but he plays best with more support. Gingy’s availability has been the topic of a lot of discussion; supposedly he’ll be able to play the first 2 to 3 weeks then he can’t make anything but weekends which essentially makes him useless. Gambit I haven’t seen in customs for a while so no comment. This team needs to be undefeated with Gingy to make playoffs.

Silva: This team would be significantly higher on my list if it wasn’t for one specific factor. Starting next month, Gingy can only play on weekends (which is why he went for such few credits). He also has a 2 series suspension to deal with on top of that. It’s a shame because the core trio of Rey, Nets, and Gingy is obviously very solid, and Gambit has proven to be a pretty solid player as well. However, because of Gingy’s availability issues starting next month, this team will lose their strongest player. Because of this reality, I expect Nets to care even less than he did last season, and this team will struggle. Trollin will have to step up huge once Gingy is out in order for this team to hope to compete for playoffs.

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Those bottom four teams were pretty close. There was a pretty big gap between #6 and #7 so I want to note that here
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6. Notorious (Silva) [5.29]Sader: What I see here is a typical Notorious team. A runner and three tanks and the potential to have a decent regular season. I don’t see them as a threat for making a championship run, I honestly see them as a Mendoza line for being a playoff team. Meaning if you can’t beat them, you don’t have a chance at the ship, if you can beat them, you do. I say that because active, panthro, and chicken seems like a consistent tanking line with a good runner in Silva behind it. There’s no tricks or conditionals here, we know what we’re looking at.

Silva: Speaking of balanced teams, here’s mine. People can call this a meme team all they want, but I’m pretty happy with it. Active is a good tank, as is Chicken. They both proved that quite well last season, and are eager to prove themselves against Pro players as well. Before he stopped playing, Panthro was also becoming a really solid player. And, I’m actually a god tho. The only question I really have right now is who is going to run, which I think we’ve figured out. It wasn’t the team I initially set out for, but I’m still quite pleased with the roster we ended up with and am pretty excited going into the season.

—-Sader: This is just my personal opinion, but starting from #5 down is where I see each team as a potential ship contender.
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5. Vanguard (Avenger) [4.70]Sader: I said Legacy was tough to rate but then I looked at these guys. They had the widest variety of rankings, ranging from #1 to #9 and the largest standard deviation overall. And I easily see why. There’s a lot of potential with this team but it’s also an interesting pairing of players that we haven’t seen before and you never know how that will turn out. I think having Avenger run is the best long term option because if he can get just good enough at it, KD and BCN will do the rest. In fact that’s my personal challenge to him, if he can get good enough at running to stop me from scoring directly off him, they will beat my team. One thing he will have to do is learn his teammates tendencies well, because they all play extremely different. A large part of running is being able to predict your teammates actions and the decision making between KD and BCN is opposite. I think they could also find early success with KD or BCN running, but then their skill ceiling is lower without one of the tanking.

Silva: This is probably one of the most balanced teams on paper. They’re probably my dark horse pick for this season. The tanking line of KD, BCN, and Wolverine has a ton of potential if they work together well. Avenger is a fine player himself, but I think it’s for the best that he’s running since those other three are proven tanks. Whether this team will be ship contending is something we’ll just have to wait and see, but there’s no denying that this is one of the best teams on paper.

4. NSFW (Drk) [3.89]Sader: I heard this team scrimmed last night and I’m curious to hear what people thought. This team looks pretty good to me but there’s a potential for collapse. Drk and DCleak are a pretty deadly duo but they’ll have to be the ones to earn wins. Still haven’t played against Infektion but supposedly he fills the passive tank role like he did in H4. That means DCleak will have to initiate everything aggressive for this team, which is fine because that’s what he does best. Rayzyr will probably be designated runner to start but I’m not sure it will last long before Drk and Cleak start holding the ball more.

Silva: Terrible team names aside, Dark has put together a potentially great team. My traitorous duo managed to snag Infektion for only 10 credits, which is a really great investment. Infektion hasn’t had the best of starts to H5 Grif from what we’ve seen in customs, but he’s definitely improving. DCleak will do his usual DCleak things for this team while Dark and Infektion just stand there killing things. Rayzyr is a great pickup for them since he’s a pretty solid runner already and has seemed to improve despite not playing for like a year. They seemed a little shaky after playing them last night, but I definitely think this team has the potential to at least make the championship assuming they keep improving together as a team.

3. Bomb Squad (Saintz) [3.59]Sader: No BS, this team is pretty damn good. I will admit I had them lower because I wasn’t high on Rice or Conviction but after scrimming them I see they have the potential to hold their own. Rice still does dumb stuff sometimes but he has the mechanics to ball out, conviction is a little raw but they can both be molded. I’m not sure everybody has realized yet but Hide has evolved from decent to easily top 10. And we haven’t even gotten to Saintz yet. As of last night he seems to have fixed his connection problems and he’s back to dropping +40’s on my ass in 15 minute games. The only real weakness I see is running, they either have to give it to somebody with little experience or have saintz hold it and lose some stopping power.

Silva: Bomb Squad is a team with enough potential to be the best team, but because of personality and team comp factors I could see them ranging anywhere from 1 to 4. Saintz will carry the tanking line, and Hide is a great pick up that compliments Saintz’s tanking style well, but after that is where we start to see some potential cracks. Rice is a good to really good overall player, but his decision making at times is highly questionable. He’ll also be the runner for this team and is known to get upset at times. If Rice does something dumb with the bomb or doesn’t throw it when he should, it’ll be interesting to see how this team reacts, especially with Hide also being known as a bit of a hot head.

Conviction is a solid pick. He seems to possibly have some consistency issues, but being able to tank with both Saintz and Hide should help with that. If this team works out and doesn’t end up hating each other, they could definitely win the ship. If these issues arise, I’m not so sure.

2. No Cap (Venom) [2.88]Sader: I’m a little salty about this team. I had meant to bid on Incrips when I saw him at 10 because that’s way too cheap, he was around #15 in the pool on my list. But then I got distracted with other dumb things and bid page lagging and he slipped through. I think he is by far the best 10 credit bid this season and that’s the exact formula that has gotten Ace ship wins while highest bid before (piggies for 10). From the little I’ve seen of Venom lately I would call him the best legacy runner so they should be set there. Atone is a little bit of a question mark for me because sometimes I see him putting in good work but then other times I see mistakes. But I think Ace can provide the coaching that will make Atone consistent, and make Incrips a playmaker. I’m worried about these guys.

Silva: This is an interesting team. On paper it looks like Venom has a pretty solid team here. He has Ace which is obviously going to up your team’s value substantially. He also managed to grab Crip and Atone, both pretty solid tanks. Venom will presumably be the runner for this team, which is fine. Venom isn’t the best runner out there, but he’ll do, especially running behind Ace and the others. This is another team I’d say has a good bit of potential. Ace is obviously a huge boost to any team, so this team’s success will pretty much come down to how Crip and Atone perform. These players all have different playstyles, so it’ll be interesting to see how they work together. I had them nowhere near the 2 spot, so maybe people see something here that I’m not. Or maybe the belief in Ace.exe is just too strong.

1. One-Hit Wonders (Sader) [2.47]Sader: Well look at that. I promise I didn’t rig the voting :P. My team, One-Hit Wonders, tops out the list at #1. We were the most agreed-upon top team, with 13/17 votes putting us top 3 and never outside of top 5. I ended up doing the most predictable thing possible and getting Sab with the majority of my credits. I don’t think I surprised anybody there. My next pick up of Killerz probably isn’t surprising either, considering I picked him up for the very first iteration of OHW years ago. My final bid was the one that caught people off guard. I don’t think many people had heard of Spike18 going into bidding, but I’d seen him play some customs with SKM and I feel like he has a lot of potential. He’s got a lot to learn but he’s smart and I think it will come quickly.

I think this team can be worthy of the #1 spot IF and ONLY IF we play enough customs to keep it. OHW teams are only ever good when we have enough chemistry to backup our unique playstyle. With a new roster that chemistry needs to be built. Also, in a lower quality league like this the winning team will simply be decided by who makes less dumb mistakes, so we need to stay sharp and avoid those.

Silva: Crusader has yet again managed to scam himself a good team. Had the great bidding debacle not occurred, Sader wouldn’t have had enough credits to afford Killerz. Either way, this is clearly a top 1-2 team on paper right now. You have three players all with previous experience playing together in Pro on various teams, and a strong up and comer willing to practice in Spike. We know what to expect from Sader and Sab. Spike will improve throughout the season, hopefully (for them) learning the OHW playstyle. For me, the team’s success will likely come down to Killerz.

His last stint in Pro didn’t go so well for him, and since then he’s basically been able to meme in Legacy for two seasons. There’s also the question of who is going to run the ball. Presumably it will be Crusader, which will be interesting since Killerz has been used to running for at least a year. Or will we see Crusader the tank return from his Reach days? Either way this will be an interesting team to watch.